A trait of grindcore is the "microsong". Several bands have produced songs that are only seconds in length.[5] British band Napalm Death holds the Guinness World Record for shortest song ever recorded with the one-second "You Suffer" (1987). Many bands, such as Agoraphobic Nosebleed, record simple phrases that may be rhythmically sprawled out across an instrumental lasting only a couple of bars in length.

A variety of microgenres have subsequently emerged, often labeling bands according to traits that deviate from regular grindcore, including goregrind, focused on themes of gore (e.g. mutilation and pathology), and pornogrind, fixated on pornographic lyrical themes. Another offshoot is electrogrind (or cybergrind) which incorporates electronic music elements such as sampling and programmed drums. Although influential within hardcore and extreme metal, grindcore remains an underground form of music.

Grindcore evolved as a blend of thrash metal,[6]thrashcore[3] and hardcore punk. The name derives from the fact that grind is a British term for thrash; that term was appended to -core from hardcore.[7] Grindcore relies on standard hardcore punk instrumentation: electric guitar, bass and drums.[8] However, grindcore alters the usual practices of metal or rock music in regard to song structure and tone.[8] The vocal style is "ranging from high-pitched shrieks to low, throat-shredding growls and barks."[8] In some cases, no clear lyrics exist. Vocals may be used as merely an added sound effect, a common practice with bands such as the experimental Naked City.

A characteristic of some grindcore songs is the "microsong," lasting only a few seconds. In 2001, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded Brutal Truth the record for "Shortest Music Video" for 1994's "Collateral Damage" (the song lasts four seconds). In 2007, the video for the Napalm Death song "You Suffer" set a new "Shortest Music Video" record: 1.3 seconds.[9] Beyond the microsong, it is characteristic of grindcore to have short songs in general; for example, Carcass' debut album Reek of Putrefaction (1988) consists of 22 tracks with an average length of 1 minute and 48 seconds. It is also not uncommon for grindcore albums to be very short when compared to other genres, usually consisting of a large track list but having a total length of only 15 to 20 minutes.

The blast beat is a drum beat characteristic of grindcore in all its forms,[11] although its usage predates the genre itself, as it is native to jazz. In Adam MacGregor's definition, "the blast-beat generally comprises a repeated, sixteenth-note figure played at a very fast tempo, and divided uniformly among the kick drum, snare and ride, crash, or hi-hat cymbal."[11] Blast beats have been described as "maniacal percussive explosions, less about rhythm per second than sheer sonic violence."[12] Napalm Death coined the term,[12] though this style of drumming had previously been practiced by others. Daniel Ekeroth argues that the blast beat was first performed by the Swedish group Asocial on their 1982 demo.[13]Dirty Rotten Imbeciles ("No Sense"),[11]Stormtroopers of Death ("Milk"),[14]Sarcófago ("Satanas"),[15]Sepultura ("Antichrist"),[16] and Repulsion[17] also included the technique prior to Napalm Death's emergence.

Repulsion is often credited with inventing the classic grind blast beat (played at 190 bpm), as well as its distinctive bass tone.[17]Shane Embury, in particular, advocates the band as the origin of Napalm Death's later innovations.[17]Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth declares that "Horrified was and still is the defining core of what grind became; a perfect mix of hardcore punk with metallic gore, speed and distortion."[27]

Grindcore, as such, was developed during the mid-1980s in the United Kingdom by Napalm Death, a group who emerged from the anarcho-punk scene in Birmingham, England.[3] While their first recordings were in the vein of Crass,[3] they eventually became associated with crust punk.[35] The group began to take on increasing elements of thrashcore, post-punk, and power electronics.[36] The group also went through many changes in personnel.[37] A major shift in style took place after Mick Harris became the group's drummer.[37] Punk historian Ian Glasper indicates that "For several months gob-smacked audiences weren't sure whether Napalm Death were actually a serious band any longer, such was the undeniable novelty of their hyper-speed new drummer."[37] Albert Mudrian's research suggests that the name "grindcore" was coined by Harris. When asked about coming up with the term, Harris said:

Grindcore came from "grind", which was the only word I could use to describe Swans after buying their first record in '84. Then with this new hardcore movement that started to really blossom in '85, I thought "grind" really fit because of the speed so I started to call it grindcore.[38]

Other sources contradict Harris' claim. In a Spin magazine article written about the genre, Steven Blush declares that "the man often credited" for dubbing the style grindcore was Shane Embury, Napalm Death's bassist since 1987. Embury offers his own account of how the grindcore "sound" came to be:

As far as how this whole sound got started, we were really into Celtic Frost, Siege – which is a hardcore band from Boston – a lot of hardcore and death-metal bands, and some industrial-noise bands like the early Swans. So, we just created a mesh of all those things. It's just everything going at a hundred miles per hour, basically.[39]

Earache Records founder Digby Pearson concurs with Embury, saying that Napalm Death "put hardcore and metal through an accelerator."[40] Pearson, however, said that grindcore "wasn't just about the speed of [the] drums, blast beats, etc." He claimed that "it actually was coined to describe the guitars - heavy, downtuned, bleak, harsh riffing guitars [that] 'grind', so that's what the genre was described as, by the musicians who were its innovators [and] proponents."[41]

While abrasive, grindcore achieved a measure of mainstream visibility. New Musical Express featured Napalm Death on their cover in 1988, declaring them "the fastest band in the world."[42] As James Hoare, deputy editor of Terrorizer, writes:

It can be argued that no strand of extreme metal (with a touch of hardcore and post-punk tossed in for flavouring), has had so big an impact outside the gated community of patch-jackets and circle-pits as grindcore has in the UK. [...] the genre is a part of the British musical experience.[43]

Napalm Death's seismic impact inspired other British grindcore groups in the 1980s, among them Extreme Noise Terror,[35]Carcass and Sore Throat.[44] Extreme Noise Terror, from Ipswich, formed in 1984.[45] With the goal of becoming "the most extreme hardcore punk band of all time,"[46] the group took Mick Harris from Napalm Death in 1987.[47] Ian Glasper describes the group as "pissed-off hateful noise with its roots somewhere between early Discharge and Disorder, with [vocalists] Dean [Jones] and Phil [Vane] pushing their trademark vocal extremity to its absolute limit."[47] In 1991, the group collaborated with the acid house group The KLF, appearing onstage with the group at the Brit Awards in 1992.[48] Carcass released Reek of Putrefaction in 1988, which John Peel declared his favorite album of the year despite its very poor production.[49] The band's focus on gore and anatomical decay, lyrically and in sleeve artwork, inspired the goregrind subgenre.[20] Sore Throat, said by Ian Glasper to have taken "perhaps the most uncompromisingly anti-music stance"[50] were inspired by crust punk as well as industrial music.[51] Some listeners, such as Digby Pearson, considered them to be simply an in-joke or parody of grindcore.[52]

In the subsequent decade, two pioneers of the style became increasingly commercially viable. According to Nielsen Soundscan, Napalm Death sold 367,654 units between May 1991 and November 2003, while Carcass sold 220,374 units in the same period.[53] The inclusion of Napalm Death's "Twist the Knife (Slowly)" on the Mortal Kombat soundtrack brought the band much greater visibility, as the compilation scored a Top 10 position in the Billboard 200 chart[54] and went platinum in less than a year.[55] The originators of the style have expressed some ambivalence regarding the subsequent popularity of grindcore. Pete Hurley, the guitarist of Extreme Noise Terror, declared that he had no interest in being remembered as a pioneer of this style: "grindcore was a legendarily stupid term coined by a hyperactive kid from the West Midlands, and it had nothing to do with us whatsoever. ENT were, are, and - I suspect - always will be a hardcore punk band... not a grindcore band, a stenchcore band, a trampcore band, or any other sub-sub-sub-core genre-defining term you can come up with."[56]Lee Dorian of Napalm Death indicated that "Unfortunately, I think the same thing happened to grindcore, if you want to call it that, as happened to punk rock - all the great original bands were just plagiarised by a billion other bands who just copied their style identically, making it no longer original and no longer extreme."[57]

Journalist Kevin Stewart-Panko argues that the American grindcore of the 1990s borrowed from three sources: British grindcore, the American precursors, and death metal.[58] As early Napalm Death albums were not widely distributed in the United States, American groups tended to take inspiration from later works, such as Harmony Corruption.[58] American groups also often employ riffs taken from crossover thrash or thrash metal.[58] Early American grind practitioners included Terrorizer and Assück.[44]Anal Cunt, a particularly dissonant group who lacked a bass player, were also particularly influential.[58] Their style was sometimes referred to as "noisecore" or "noisegrind", described by Giulio of Cripple Bastards as "the most anti-musical and nihilistic face of extreme music at that time."[24][59]Brutal Truth was a groundbreaking group in the American scene at the beginning of the 1990s.[44]

The Locust, from San Diego,[60] also take inspiration from powerviolence (Crossed Out, Dropdead), first-wave screamo (Angel Hair), obscure experimental rock (Art Bears, Renaldo and the Loaf), and death metal.[65] The Locust were sometimes described as "hipster grind" because of their fan base and fashion choices.[58] In Los Angeles, Hole also initially drew influence from grindcore in their early releases, particularly on their singles "Dicknail" and "Teenage Whore", as well as on their debut album, Pretty on the Inside (1991),[66] all of which featured sexually provocative and violent lyrics, as well as the heavy distortion and fluctuating tempo that distinguished the genre. Frontwoman Courtney Love stated that she wanted to capture the distinguishing elements of grindcore while incorporating more pop-based melodic structure, although the band distanced themselves from the style in their later releases.[66]

European groups, such as Agathocles, from Belgium,[44]Patareni, of Croatia, and Fear of God, from Switzerland, are important early practitioners of the style.[72] Filthy Christians, who signed to Earache Records in 1989, introduced the style in Sweden,[73] D.D.T. & Fear of Dog were pioneering grind & noise in Serbia since mid-end of '80, Extreme Smoke 57 in Slovenia at the early beginning of the '90, while Cripple Bastards established Italian grindcore.[28] Giulio of Cripple Bastards asserts that the name itself took some time to migrate from Britain, with the style being referred to as "death-thrashcore" for a time in Europe.[28]Nasum, who emerged from the Swedish death metal scene,[74] became a popular group, addressing political topics from a personal perspective.[75]

Anders Jakobson, their drummer, reported that "It was all these different types of people who enjoyed what we were doing. [...] We made grindcore a bit easier to listen to at the expense of the diehard grindcore fans who thought that we were, well, not sellouts, but not really true to the original essence of grindcore."[75] Other Swedish groups, such as General Surgery and Regurgitate, practiced goregrind.[76]Inhume, from the Netherlands,[77]Rotten Sound, from Finland,[78] and Leng Tch'e, from Belgium,[79] were subsequent European groups who practiced grindcore with death metal inflections. In 2000s, the Belgium-based Aborted "had grown into the role of key contributors to the death-grind genres".[80]

Crust punk had a major impact on grindcore's emergence. The first grindcore, practiced by British bands such as Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror, emerged from the crust punk scene. This early style is sometimes dubbed "crustgrind".[1]

^"Another interesting sub-subgenre was this strange crossover of first-generation emo and grind. Bands like Reversal of Man or Orchid may not have stood the test of time, but it was a pretty cool sound at the time and one that was pretty uniquely American. - Greg Pratt, "Altered States," "Grindcore Special" part 2, p. 43.